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The 45-year-old woman was found naked and unconscious in a wooded area by the Kmart and Hannaford Drive on Sept. 1. She was taken to Fletcher-Allen Health Care with severe injuries and died the next day.

On Feb. 4, police arrested 57-year-old Phillip Searles, a homeless man who shared a tent with the victim. Searles has been charged with aggravated domestic assault as a habitual offender.

Searles' lawyer, Bill Norful, told WPTZ the state alleges his client hit the victim on the head and the throat, connecting him to the death because it could have led to the medical emergency that put her in a coma.

"They've made a connection that he was somehow involved?" WPTZ's David Charns asked Norful on Thursday.

"They have," Norful said, adding the state cannot prove the victim's death was a result of the allegations because the victim was allegedly in other abusive relationships.

“More than one I believe were of a physically abusive nature,” Norful said. “There was much other violence that was consummated upon the victim.”

”The only connection to my client thus far is statements that have been attributed to him from what I don't consider at this time to be very credible sources,” Norful said.

Those statements include witnesses telling police they overhead conversations between Searles and others after the victim was in the hospital.

They told police Searles said, “I really hurt her this time,” and “I don’t smack her around that hard.”

It was Searles, documents said, who alerted employees at the Kmart that the victim was unconscious. An autopsy report, summarized in the affidavit, indicated the cause of death as blunt-force trauma to the head.

Searles is expected to be in court Friday. He has been held without bail since his arrest earlier this month.

Prosecutors were unable to be reached via phone Thursday.

Searles has three prior felony charges, Norful said. A fourth felony charge, which he faces, would put him in prison for life.